Daily Devotional - 10/10/15

Prayer Focus - Dreams



Day 1
Pray for:
One dream you have for yourself



Dear Lord - Please open my ears to hear Your ever present voice and grant me the strength to obey.



Psalms 100


"Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.  Worship the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs.  Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are the sheep of His pasture. 

Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name.  For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations."   Psalm 100


It is okay to be happy.  Jesus came to give us life and life to the fullest (John 10:10).  We are to shout for joy.  We are to worship with gladness and sing joyful songs.  This does not sound like a lot of our lives.  We are struggling along.  When someone asks us how we are, we say, "doing OK", or "tired", or "hanging in there".  At least those are some of the common ones I say.  I hear about the same from my friends and colleagues.  Somehow this doesn't seem to fit with many of these verses. 

I am glad that God wants us to be happy and to rejoice but I still struggle with this.  There are a few reasons that I can see that make it difficult for me.  First, I think I was raised to think that church and God was a holy and serious endeavor.  I was being sacrilegious if I was enjoying myself; especially at a service or at a church activity.  I was to be like the Puritans and be pure and like the Quakers and be quiet and contemplative.  Christians weren't supposed to have fun!  Only the "heathens" had fun.  Then there was the artist side of me that wanted to be the "troubled soul", the artist on the edge.  I could not write deep and meaningful stories and poems if I was "happy".  Also, I would be naïve if I was a happy person.  In my pride, I looked down on happy and joyful people and thought how could they be so shallow to be grateful and positive when there was so much evil and bad in the world.  They just could not see things clearly like I did.  What a prideful person I was. 

When I became a Christian, despite whole heartedly acknowledging that I should be happy and joyful in Christ, all of these imbedded attitudes did not go away overnight.  They had become such a part of my character that I struggled for years with depression and sadness even as a fully committed Christian.  I wrote lists and lists of what I was grateful on a daily basis to help retrain my mind.  I kept digging more and more of these attitudes out of my soul. 

Although I am not perfect by any means on this aspect of my character now, I have made tremendous progress.  I can see that happy and joyful people are not simple and naïve as I had once thought, but rather blessed.  They do not rejoice because the world is good, but because there is still good in the world and because there is God!  They are the ones that I want to be like!  They are the ones that have life and life to the fullest.  We can always rejoice in God.  We can always shout to joy to Him and worship Him with gladness.  He is good and His love does endure forever.  He does not change.  He is always faithful.  He is the root of any good and beauty that we see around us.

So it is OK to be happy. No, not just OK, it is fitting and right.  I praise God that He has freed me, and is freeing me on a daily basis of my unhappiness.  I am grateful to be joyful.  I am grateful to be alive. 




Prayer for the Day



Dear Lord,


We are so grateful for You.  We are grateful that we can rejoice and be glad.  There is so much sadness in the world.  Thank You that we do not have to add to it.  Let us bring joy to You and to those around us on a daily basis.  Joy is like oxygen to the souls around us.  The world is hungry for this.  Help us to fill the world with what You give - life and life to the fullest.

In Jesus' Name,
Amen



QFT


1.  Am I joyful?  Why or why not?  What hinders me from being joyful?  When am I the most joyful?

2. Do I have any attitudes that I have developed over the years that are keeping me from being joyful?  What can I do to correct these attitudes?  Who can I talk to, to get help with them? 

3. Do I praise God often?  Do I complement people?  Do I bring joy by my words?  Why or why not?

4. In general, am I a positive or a negative person?  Why do I think I am this way?  What would other people say?  Do I want to be a positive person?  If I am not a positive person, how can I become one?  If I am a positive person, is there someone I can encourage and help to become more positive?

5. How does focusing on the goodness of God help me to be more joyful?  What good do I see in the world that I can focus on?  How can my actions bring more good to the world?